WHITEADDER AND LAUDERDALE 



up. It was some way above this, at a point where you 

 can easily spring across the Whiteadder, that in youth 

 I suffered the disappointment of all my days on this 

 river, and lost the largest trout I ever fairly hooked in 

 it. The water was on this occasion so low and clear 

 that I had mounted a horse-hair cast, and a fish nearer 

 two pounds than one was obviously outwitted by the 

 quite unwonted article. When it felt the prick of the 

 fly, however, it leaped clean out on to the low, rushy 

 bank, and rashly, perhaps, thinking the fish would break 

 me anyhow, I made an instant dash for it. But in its 

 untaxed vigour it slipped through my fingers and was 

 gone, fly and all. My stock of philosophy at twenty 

 was not equal to the occasion. I sat down upon the 

 bank and almost wept. 



I don't think even now many anglers get up to the 

 Fasney or the Whiteadder above their junction. It 

 is a long, long way from anywhere, though a crow could 

 flv to Edinburgh in thirty miles. But then an angling 

 biped isn't a crow. Nowadays he is not often an en- 

 thusiastic pedestrian, and the narrow road that edges 

 along the hillsides to the source of the Whiteadder 

 is of a primitive description and not well adapted to 

 any of his mechanical aids to travel. Nor again is 

 bed and board to be had nowadays within the Lam- 

 mermuirs. The few inhabitants are, I believe, dis- 

 couraged, if not prohibited, from affording it, for 

 obvious reasons. It is a fine wild country where the 

 infant Whiteadder and the brawling Fasney join their 

 waters, though in a sense so near to the heart of things. 

 It is much more lonely than the heart of Exmoor or 

 Dartmoor nowadays, to make a comparison so many 



363 



